Boruto Reveals Whether Shikadai Should've Been Promoted

Much like his father before him, Shikadai was able to achieve what his dad Shikimaru was able to early on in his ninja career, become the first of his class to make the chunin rank. With all ninja beginning academy as Genin, the lowest level of the ninja ranks, the Chunin Exams were created to see which of these younger students would be able to be promoted to a higher ranking where they were leading their fellow classmates and teammates in ninja missions. The most recent installment of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations revealed whether Shikadai was ready for leadership.

So was the son of Shikimaru and Temari ready to lead his own team? Not really. We know that answer isn't exactly 100% but it was the correct answer as Shikadai seemed able to manage his own team with Team 10, but not others under his watch. Given a mission to collect a rare flower with medicinal properties, Shikadai lead a new team in the form of Boruto, Wasabi, and Iwabe in attempting to gain the floral objective.

When his team proved their differences from Team 10 were a little too much too bare, Shikadai went off on his own, confident that he could accomplish the task on his own. In his mind, Boruto and company were only holding him back from his ultimate objective. While the mission was ultimately a success, Shikadai was being graded on it and Moegi, who oversaw the quest, deemed that while Shikadai could lead Team 10 occassionally, he was not at a place where he could permanently lead different teams of ninja.

While Shikadai is a powerful ninja that is able to utilize his father's shadow techniques and his mother's wind ninjutsu, it seems that he still has some hurdles to overcome before he can become a fully functioning chunin.

What do you think of the mission that ultimately proved Shikadai wasn't yet up to the task of becoming a chunin? What other ninja in Boruto's generation do you think should get another shot at becoming captain themselves? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime!

Originally created by Masashi Kishimoto for Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1999, Naruto follows a young ninja, with a sealed demon within him, that wishes to become the leader of his home village. The series ran for 700 chapters overall, and was adapted into an anime series by Studio Pierrot and Aniplex that ran from 2002 to 2017. The series was popular enough to warrant a sequel, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations which is set several years after the events of the original Naruto story and features the children of many of its key characters such as Naruto and Hinata.